Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (27042)	8/30/2009 11:07:12 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

"My point about Somalia is that it has no government at all. Just self interest-greed; and the kids are not protected." That is nice to know. Your point has nothing whatsoever to do with any evaluation or comparison of Objectivism. And Objectivism has nothing to do with greed... It stands to reason that someone believing in personal responsibility as the pith of their existence would protect children... Galt's Gulch was the idealised representation of Rand's philosophy, as you well know. Do you think it remotely resembled Somalia??? Then why use such a disingenuous reference when we are discussing humanity and serious matters??? "The words below sound nice, but what do they mean? What country follows them?" No country follows them....but they mean something all right. How do YOU reconcile reason and objective reality (you fall if you step off your balcony and you swallow water and die if you walk into the ocean over your head) with your "ignore all premises" but find the pragmatic warm spot on the planet or the blanket approach to existence??

To: koan who wrote (27042)	8/30/2009 11:45:24 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

"You are not your brother's keeper. You cannot and do not have unchosen obligations; you're responsible for your own actions. You would be responsible for any harm you do to other people. You would be held responsible for any relationship that you enter into voluntarily, for any contract that you break unilaterally. You would have to stand by your word. You would have no right to pass on to others the burden or consequences of your mistakes or failures or whims. In other words, you cannot make other men your victims, and you need not be their victim. Any help you might want to give others would be your private privilege, but not your moral – and certainly not your legal-duty. If you want to help others, fine, so long as you can afford it, so long as it's your voluntary choice, and so long as you do not claim it as a major virtue or duty. It is good to help others only when you help them on the grounds of the value you see in them. If you see a talented man struggling, and you want to help him financially (and you can afford it), that's not a sacrifice, and would be a good gesture, under my morality. But it's not good to help someone who is suffering as a result of his own evil. If you help him, you are sanctioning his immorality, which is evil. Reason involves knowing the nature and the consequences of your actions, and of knowing where your rational self-interest lies. Reason does not mean you can arbitrarily decide that whatever you want is in your self-interest. To go by reason is not to be guided by emotions or whims. Anything man wants or needs must be produced; man must possess knowledge in order to produce it; reason provides that knowledge. A man of self-esteem does not want the unearned: he doesn't want anything from others that he must obtain by coercion – by crime or by government force and regulation. Such a man deals with other men as an equal, by trade. Further, a man of reason plans his life long range. The psychological distinction between a rational man and an evader is that a rational man thinks, plans, and acts long range,while the more neurotic and evasive a person is, the shorter the range of his interests. The Declaration of Independence, which contains the Objectivist morality by implication, says man has a right to his own life, his own liberty, and the pursuit of his own happiness; it doesn't mention service to others."